The present invention concerns a nonwoven fabric the fibers of which have a polyethylene at least on their surface, with the fibers being thermally bonded. Furthermore claimed is a device for the manufacture of a nonwoven fabric using a polyethylene-containing polymer, and a procedure for the manufacture of a nonwoven fabric the fibers of which have polyethylene at least on part of their surface.
Because of their multiple applications, nonwoven fabrics have the most varied applications. Because of their multiple influence parameters, these properties can often be determined only by means of elaborate tests, where in addition to the effects of the polymer material used, also machine effects, ambient conditions and other parameters have to be taken into account. For instance, a nonwoven fabric is obtained from WO 02/31245 A2 that presumably is particularly soft. A nonwoven fabric is obtained based on multiple experimental parameters that are supposedly manufactured with a consolidation surface area of at least 30% of the nonwoven fabric surface area and an abrasion coefficient of less than 0.30 mg/cm2. To make such a material possible, a pre-consolidated nonwoven fabric is passed though a first and then a second calender, where thermal bonding takes place in both calenders. In a calender placed downstream, the material thus doubly consolidated is stretched essentially in CD direction, before being spooled and transported for further processing.
It is the task of the present invention to make available a nonwoven fabric that on the one hand feels soft and on the other is sufficiently robust for numerous applications; the manufacture of the nonwoven fabric should be as economical as possible.